Well, I was thinking about some recent upgrades I've done lately and thought I'd put an update here as well. I have now converted all my gas line to John Guest.
I've finally added in check valves too. The most economical choice was to get 1/4" NPT to 1/4" MFL check valves through a friend who has a Foxx Equipment account and could get them for me for just over $2 a piece, so I bought 30. haha. I did have to change out some of my John Guest fittings though, and I needed to get more of the FFL to tubing fitting to thread onto the check valves.
I also built a cleaning manifold with just John Guest fittings. This will allow me to clean all my lines in two sittings, cleaning 7 taps at a time. What I will do is heat up a solution of Penetrate (basically a 2x concentration of BLC), use my chugger pump to push into one tap, inside the walk-in the disconnects will be taken off the tubing and the tubing for the seven taps will be connected to the John Guest fittings in the manifold that I made. The other 6 lines will be the output, and I'll have growler fillers in those spouts to drain back to the pot of cleaner to recirculate the cleaner. I haven't used this specific setup yet, but I've made something similar in the past that worked well with the PVC lines.
I've also started replacing my old gauges with new, higher accuracy, re-zero gauges. They are the Winters P9S gauges. I have a mix of 0-15, 0-30, and 0-60. I also have a Wika 0-60 test gauge that is accurate to .25% of span that I built an apparatus around, it lets me test other gauges that have 1/4" NPT, 3/8" OD tubing with the John Guest fitting, and a ball lock fitting as well. I'll be replacing all of my gauges with these, they just tend to be a bit more expensive, so I've been doing it gradually since I have a lot of gauges to replace.
Here is a pick of some of the gauge stuff:
Here are also some adapters that I use when brewing for my camlock fittings. I use compressed air and garden hose quick disconnects that I need to be able to connect together. I also made an adapter to go from a camlock female fitting to a john guest to be able to more easily connect the pump to tubing if I only need to clean one line.
I've also made some sanke adapters. I have one with ball lock fittings, but then I also have this one with John guest fittings:
I have started a Barleywine multi vessel solera using Sankey half barrels. I started it back in 2017, and used this to fill the sankey from the fermenter. I will build two more identical ones to be able to do my cascading transfers. The John Guest fittings make this really convenient, and I'll be using the bev seal ultra 235 to be my transfer tubing.
This is when I did the transfer:
When I want to sample, I use one of these:
This is the ball lock adapter on top of the sanke with ball lock connectors. It looks like this:
I think that is about all I have changed in my serving setup since I last updated this post. I am really happy with how things are progressing though. I am looking forward to the barleywine in 4+ years when all three vessels are filled, aging on oak, and I do the cascade fill each subsequent year. I may also be starting a sanke single vessel solera for a russian imperial stout within the next 5 years or so (I just kegged 14 gallons, so I should be good for a while).
I still really like the Perlick 650ss faucets and Bev Seal Ultra 235 tubing. I will say that the first pour is foamy, and I have come to peace with it since I'm not throwing any beer away due to plastic taint.
I did realize a problem specific to John guest fittings and braid reinforced pvc tubing for gas line. Because the seal is on the outside rather than the inside, if you use a high enough pressure, it can get CO2 between the plies and cause a failure of the tubing. I realized this recently when doing my high pressure force carbonation at room temp. I have since bought a roll of 3/16" ID x 3/8" kuriyama PVC tubing, but I am also looking into LLDPE tubing for this purpose (and actually, I can even use the spare bev seal ultra as gas tubing too, I just don't like its stiffness for gas tubing).
I've made more changes to my brewing side of things, but that is a bit more beyond the scope of this post.
I hope this can help anyone looking at designing their serving setup! Please let me know if you have any questions, it has taken me over a decade to get to this point, and it is bound to evolve even from here!
